Sunnis worry about their future as Shiites take control in Iraq

A WOMAN walks past posters put up by the government celebrating the success of the elections on a street in central Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday.

AP Photo BAGHDAD, Iraq -- As the vote count trickles in, Iraq's long-dominant Sunnis are waking up to the magnitude of the defeat they suffered in Iraq's election.

For the first time in Iraq's history, power will reside not with the extended tribal clans or the elite families of Iraq's Sunni heartland, but with the religiously inclined Shiites of the south and the independence-minded Kurds of the north, two groups with vastly different agendas that do not include Sunnis.

It was a predictable outcome. By staying away from the polls, Sunnis surrendered the field to the majority Shiites and the Kurds, who likely will wield the balance of power in Iraq's new National Assembly. A final result of the assembly vote is still days away.

Yet Sunnis, accustomed to dominating Iraq's political landscape, seem caught off guard by the likely resounding Shiite victory and the extent of their apparent irrelevance to the process, leaving them bitter and disillusioned.

With religious leaders calling on their followers to boycott, and insurgents threatening a bloodbath, most Sunnis fully expected the election to be called off. They were stunned when it went ahead without them, said Ayad Samarrai, a senior official with the Iraqi Islamic Party, which boycotted the election.

"There is bitterness within the Sunni community because of what happened," he said. "They thought the people encouraging them not to vote would stop the process, but it wasn't like that. And the insurgents said they would wash the streets of Baghdad with blood, but they weren't able to do that. So many (Sunni) people are feeling they didn't get a proper opportunity to participate."

Sunni leaders now are scrambling to salvage a role for themselves in the political process. Shiite politicians have extended a hand of friendship and say they do not intend to freeze Sunnis out of the constitution-writing process. One proposal under consideration is that Sunni parties that boycotted would be invited to sit on the committees that will help draft Iraq's constitution. Another is that Sunnis should be given Cabinet positions in the new government.

But Sunni leaders acknowledge it is going to be tough to sell the process to a community already deeply divided by the experience of the U.S.-led occupation, and now likely to be further alienated by its lack of representation in this first post-invasion elected government.

Sunnis looking at their parliament will see a sea of Shiite faces, many intent on pressing for a form of Islamic law that does not coincide with the Sunnis' religious beliefs, said Saadoun Dulame, a Sunni political analyst.

Of particular concern, he said, is the extent to which Shiites were motivated to vote by their top religious leader, the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. There is no comparable religious authority in Sunni Islam, and Sunnis fear they are witnessing the beginnings of a form of clerical rule that is alien to their religion.

"Shiites just listen to and blindly obey Sistani," Dulame said. "Look how they used an Iranian leader for an Iraqi election. Of course it makes Sunnis angry. Iraq is Iraq.

"If they impose Islamic law, this is a first step to civil war," he warned.

"The Sunni people will reject that because this Islamic law will mean Shiite law."

Among ordinary Sunnis, even those who voted say they are dismayed by the outcome.

"I expect they will impose Islamic law because their loyalty is to Iran," said Hashim Yaqdhan, 20, a physics student at Baghdad University who said he had not expected that the Shiite coalition would lead the vote. "And if that happens, I will be the first one to join the resistance."

Other items on the Shiite coalition's agenda risk further alienating Sunnis, who held most of the positions of power under Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party regime.

Some Shiite coalitions are talking about reviving the de-Baathification process initiated by former U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, a policy that has been widely blamed for fueling the Iraqi insurgency by pushing tens of thousands of men with military training into the already substantial ranks of the unemployed.

The danger that the election will only deepen sectarian tensions and aggravate the insurgency is real, said Ghassan Atiyyah, whose secular National Independent Party sat out the election.

"This first election will get us a highly polarized parliament, but I never expected it would be so polarized," said Atiyyah, a secular Shiite who failed to persuade the mostly Sunni members of his group not to boycott.

"The moderate seculars like me, the middle ground, are total losers. Nobody voted for Iraq, everyone voted on sectarian or religious reasons, and it's a recipe for disintegration."

Though Iraq still is waiting for a final result, the extent of the Sunni exclusion was brought home by the results of a local election in ethnically mixed Baghdad, where Sunnis always have considered themselves in the majority. Shiite parties collectively swept in excess of 70 percent of the vote, based on a turnout of 48 percent, suggesting few Sunnis voted.

Among those who did, their votes were scattered widely. The Iraqi Islamic Party, which did not boycott the local election, won 1 percent; the secular party led by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi got 1.2 percent; the Free Officers Movement, representing Sunni Baathist dissidents, got 1 percent, and the Constitutional Monarchy movement got 1.3 percent.

On one thing, most Sunni leaders agree: Confronted with the success of the Shiite and Kurdish political machines, they must start preparing now for the next election if they are not to be permanently frozen out of their country's politics.

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But how? Unlike the Shiites, bound by their faith and obedience to the clergy who instructed them to vote, and the Kurds, who share a common dream of independence, Sunnis lack a unified vision or a common leader.

They also aren't accustomed to thinking of themselves as "Sunnis." After decades of Baath Party rule, Sunnis seem but dimly aware of the powerful religious and ethnic bonds forged over those years within the Shiite and Kurdish communities persecuted by the regime.

"The Sunnis are not a single group," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Sunni professor and politician who leads a group of political parties opposed to the U.S. occupation. "You've got Sunnis who are nationalists, religious fundamentalists, right wing and left wing. You've got Sunni Baathists, communists and secularists.

"No Sunni can speak for all Sunnis."

Nadhmi supports a proposal by numerous Sunni leaders to call some form of Sunni national conference, perhaps including members of the insurgency, to allow Sunnis to thrash out their differences and present a united front. So far, the conference remains just a proposal.

The Sunnis do have some leverage. A clause in the provisional constitution means the permanent new constitution drafted by the National Assembly will be nullified if three of the country's provinces vote against it in a referendum. Because Sunnis dominate at least four provinces, they will be able to block any constitution they don't like.

That should act as an incentive for the Shiite and Kurdish parties to temper their demands, said Samarrai of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

"There is high tension between the communities, but there is still an Iraqi will to stay together and solve our problems," he said. "We need much wisdom to deal with the Iraqi situation now."

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